Students & Professors: how much work outside of class for a course that meets 4 hours/week?

[LynnS6]

A poll out of curiosity (and because something my students are telling me surprised me).

If you are teaching or taking a graduate level class that has 4 contact hours per week (so, you're in class T/Th 12:00-1:50), how many hours outside of class do you expect to spend for this? Edited to add: It's a writing course where students conduct a small scale research project and write it up (complete with revisions) into a paper that's near publishable (or publishable for some) quality.

I'm curious to know what students' expectations are and what professors' expectations are. (Yes, I know there are university guidelines about what to expect outside class for each credit, but I'm not sure those mesh with reality.)

Can you explain?

Edited by LynnS6 - 3/30/11 at 11:19pm

[Dar]

I voted 5-6 but that would be an average, really. I'd expect to read maybe a book a week (200-300 pages) and write a 25-30 page paper at the end, so if I worked on the paper throughout the semester I think it would be more like 5-6 hours a week... but I don't, so it's more like 3-4 hours a week with a crazy week or two at the end. Technically most of my classes are three credit hours, not four, so I guess for four credits I'd do a little more.

I think it would vary a lot in different fields, too. I know some classes include a lot of lab work, for example.. mine usually just involve a lot of reading and writing.